UK NEWS

A BABY FOR WIFE WITHOUT A WOMB

Louise Brown, the worlds first IVF baby

Saturday July 26,2008

By Mark Reynolds

A woman born with no womb is to become a mother after a friend offered to carry her baby – as a wedding present.

Mother-of-two Kate Housley, 32, pledged her womb to Fiona and Andrew O’Driscoll just five days before their wedding.

She will now carry their IVF baby for nine months and give it up to the couple after birth.

Charity worker Mrs O’Driscoll, 38, suffers from Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome, which means she was born without a womb.

Surrogacy or adoption seemed the only hope of a child for her and business consultant Mr O’Driscoll, 39.

Their lives were transformed after meeting surrogate mother Mrs Housley and her husband Dennis, 37, a helicopter engineer.

I don’t want any more babies of my own. I’ve had mine and they have brought us happiness and everything else

Kate Housley

The couples met through not-for-profit organisation Surrogacy UK and they spent about seven months getting to know and trust each other.

Mrs O’Driscoll’s eggs were fertilised with her husband’s sperm and placed in Mrs Housley’s womb. She is now 29 weeks pregnant and due to give birth in October.

Yesterday Mrs Housley, from Portsmouth, Hants, said: “I don’t want any more babies of my own. I’ve had mine and they have brought us happiness and everything else.

“This way everybody wins. I get to be pregnant which I love, and somebody else gets a baby that they want very much.”

Mrs O’Driscoll, from Highgate, north London, said: “I took drugs to stimulate my egg production. Of the resulting seven embryos two survived and were transferred into Kate.

“Two nail-biting weeks later Kate, Andrew and I were all together in a coffee shop in central London when the call came through that she was pregnant and we all burst into tears.”

“That cloud will not necessarily lift at once just because this trial has come to an end.”